Relationship Between Aerodynamic Measurement of Maximum Phonation Time With Acoustic Analysis and the Effects of Sex and Dysphonia Type.

OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS: This study set out to uncover the correlation between maximum phonation time (MPT) with acoustic and cepstral analysis in the dysphonic and control groups, considering the effects of sex and dysphonia type.

METHODS

For this cross-sectional study, a sample of 179 attendees (141 dysphonic and 38 control) were randomly selected and requested to sustain the vowel /a/ as long as they could with their habitual pitch and loudness. Reading standard sentences and conversational connected speech tasks were obtained too. Using Praat, the MPT, jitter, shimmer, noise-to-harmonic ratio, cepstral peak prominence (CPP), and smoothed cepstral peak prominence (CPPS) were calculated in the target vocal tasks.

RESULTS

There was a very low to low significant correlation (r = 0.00-0.50) between MPT amounts and acoustic analysis in the dysphonic group (P < 0.05), except for between MPT with shimmer (P > 0.05). In contrast, findings showed no significant correlation between MPT and acoustic analysis in the control group, not even separated by sex (P > 0.05). There was a very low to low correlation between MPT amounts and acoustic analysis in the male dysphonic group (P < 0.05), except for the MPT with shimmer (P > 0.05). There was no significant correlation between MPT and acoustic analysis in the female dysphonic group (P > 0.05), except for MPT with CPP (sustained vowel) (P < 0.05). Finally, very low to high correlations between MPT and some of the acoustic analysis in all the different dysphonia types were observed (P < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS

MPT contains some information about the acoustic features of the dysphonic voice, specifically the CPP and smoothed cepstral peak prominence. The data suggested that the observed relationship between MPT and the acoustic analysis has the capacity to be considered for the development of new multiparametric tests of voice assessment in dysphonia, regarding the sex and dysphonia type.